A Crowther
Biographic Data
| ID | 16320 |
|---|---|
| NAME | A Crowther |
| GIVEN NAMES | A |
| FAMILY NAME | Crowther |
| SIGNATURE | CROWTHER A |
| AFFILIATIONS | The University of Queensland |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2394-1917 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 45 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 775 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 45 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2005 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 16 |
Frontiers of cuisine
Following Haaland's work on “porridge and pot” cuisine and Stahl's “cartographies of taste” as a means of exploring cultural and ecological dynamics, this paper highlights the continuities and important variations of cuisine in South Central Africa. This paper expands archaeobotanical discussions beyond subsistence to consider how cuisine and cookery reflect the broader dynamics of plant materiality, environment, and cultural and social expressio…
Remaki n g the Late Holocene Environment of Western Uganda
Archaeological and environmental research by an international and interdisciplinary team opens new perspectives into the settlement histories of Kansyore, Early Iron Age, and Bigo period peoples in the once forested regions of the Ndali Crater Lakes Region (NCLR) of western Uganda. The research examines the role of Kansyore agropastoralists and their Early Iron Age and Bantu-speaking contemporaries in remaking a once forested environment into a f…
Late Pleistocene to late Holocene palaeoecology and human foraging at Kuumbi Cave, Zanzibar Island
Background Climate change played a major role in shaping regional human-environment interactions in Africa during the late Pleistocene-Holocene, but this topic has not been exhaustively studied, particularly in eastern Africa. While there is growing evidence that the coastal and island settings in this region played a critical role in human evolution, combined archaeological and palaeoenvironmental studies have tended to focus on the arid interio…
Coring, profiling, and trenching
Archaeologists have long emphasized the importance of large-scale excavations and multi-year or even decades-long projects at a single site or site complex. Here, we highlight archaeological field strategies, termed coring, profiling, and trenching (CPT), that rely on relatively small-scale excavations or the collection of new samples from intact deposits in previously excavated trenches (aka test units or pits). Examples from multiple sites in A…
Excavations at the Iron Age Village Site of Fibobe II, Central Zambia
The period from c. AD 900 to AD 1300 in southern Africa is characterized by transitions from small-scale Iron Age mixed economy communities to the beginnings of more intensive food production and eventually the emergence of complex polities. In Zambia, this coincides with the appearance of larger and more permanent agro-pastoralist villages that began participating in Indian Ocean trade networks. Unlike other parts of southern Africa where stone …
Microbotanical signatures of kreb
Throughout northern Africa, evidence for an intensification of wild grass gathering is reflected in Holocene archaeological contexts. However, both the recovery of macrobotanical assemblages and the specificity of their taxonomic classification are heavily influenced by food processing and post-depositional conditions. In contrast, inflorescence phytoliths provide high levels of taxonomic specificity and preserve well in most archaeological conte…
Coastal landscape changes at Unguja Ukuu, Zanzibar
Unguja Ukuu, located on the Zanzibar Archipelago, eastern Africa, was an active Indian Ocean trading settlement from the mid-first millennium until the early second millennium AD. As part of recent archaeological excavations aimed at understanding the site’s transregional trade networks, geoarchaeological analyses were undertaken to document the geomorphic context of the ancient settlement. Here, we outline the results of these field and laborato…
Archaeobotanical futures in the Indo‐Pacific
This paper introduces several archaeobotanical papers published in the same issue of Archaeology in Oceania and presents strongly argued reasons why archaeobotany should become an important subdiscipline within archaeological research in the Indo‐Pacific
Effects of chemical pre-treatments on modified starch granules
Revisiting Kalundu Mound, Zambia
Novel trajectories of food production, urbanism, and inter-regional trade fueled the emergence of numerous complex Iron Age polities in central and southern Africa. Renewed research and re-dating efforts in Botswana, Zimbabwe, and along the Swahili Coast are transforming models for how inter-regional interaction spheres contributed to these patterns. While societies in present-day Zambia played an important role in the trade of copper, ivory, gol…
Eastern Africa and the Early Indian Ocean
This paper situates Eastern Africa in the early maritime trade of the Indian Ocean, reviewing evidence for connections from Egypt and Red Sea, the Gulf, and Southeast Asia from prehistory to the Islamic Period. The region played a pivotal role in developing global networks, but we argue that it has become the “forgotten south” in an era of emerging empires. One reason for this is a lack of understanding of maritime mobility around the rim of the …
Iron Age hunting and herding in coastal eastern Africa
The morphological differentiation of African bovids in highly fragmented zooarchaeological assemblages is a major hindrance to reconstructing the nature and spread of pastoralism in sub-Saharan Africa. Here we employ collagen peptide mass fingerprinting, known as Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry (ZooMS), coupled with recently published African ZooMS reference datasets, to identify domesticates and wild bovids in Iron Age assemblages at the cav…
Taphonomy of Plant Micro-remains in Environmental Archaeology
Towards a Historical Ecology of Intertidal Foraging in the Mafia Archipelago
Understanding the timing and nature of human influence on coastal and island ecosystems is becoming a central concern in archaeological research, particularly when investigated within a historical ecology framework. Unfortunately, the coast and islands of eastern Africa have not figured significantly within this growing body of literature, but are important given their historically contingent environmental, social, and political contexts, as well…
Structural characterization and decontamination of dental calculus for ancient starch research
Asian Crop Dispersal in Africa and Late Holocene Human Adaptation to Tropical Environments
Occupation of the humid tropics by Late Holocene food producers depended on the use of vegetative agricultural systems. A small number of vegetative crops from the Americas and Asia have come to dominate tropical agriculture globally in these warm and humid environments, due to their ability to provide reliable food output with low labour inputs, as well as their suitability to these environments. The prehistoric arrival in Africa of Southeast As…
Year-old record of Middle and Later Stone Age innovation in an East African tropical forest
The Middle to Later Stone Age transition in Africa has been debated as a significant shift in human technological, cultural, and cognitive evolution. However, the majority of research on this transition is currently focused on southern Africa due to a lack of long-term, stratified sites across much of the African continent. Here, we report a 78,000-year-long archeological record from Panga ya Saidi, a cave in the humid coastal forest of Kenya. Fo…
Subsistence mosaics, forager-farmer interactions, and the transition to food production in eastern Africa
The spread of agriculture across sub-Saharan Africa has long been attributed to the large-scale migration of Bantu-speaking groups out of their west Central African homeland from about 4000 years ago. These groups are seen as having expanded rapidly across the sub-continent, carrying an ‘Iron Age’ package of farming, metal-working, and pottery, and largely replacing pre-existing hunter-gatherers along the way. While elements of the ‘traditional’ …
Long-term Trends in Terrestrial and Marine Invertebrate Exploitation on the Eastern African Coast
The nature and trajectory of coastal and maritime adaptations, and the complex ways foraging economies have been structured to include both marine and terrestrial resources, are becoming key topics of interest in African archaeological research. There is, therefore, an increasing need to understand the longer-term context for more recent shifts in coastal economies, and for greater attention to be paid to the role of a broader spectrum of resourc…
Spice and rice
Early connections
Early connections - 1
Ships of the Desert, Camels of the Ocean
Characterising marine mollusc exploitation in the eastern African Iron Age
Zanzibar and Indian Ocean trade in the first millennium CE
Recent archaeological excavations at the seventh- to tenth-century CE sites of Unguja Ukuu and Fukuchani on Zanzibar Island have produced large numbers of glass beads that shed new light on the island’s early interactions with the wider Indian Ocean world. A selected sample of the beads recovered was analyzed by laser ablation-inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) to determine the origins of the glass used to make the beads and…
Dietary Diversity on the Swahili Coast
Occupants of coastal and island eastern Africa-now known as the 'Swahili coast'-were involved in long-distance trade with the Indian Ocean world during the later first millennium CE. Such exchanges may be traced via the appearance of non-native animals in the archaeofaunal record; additionally, this record reveals daily culinary practises of the members of trading communities and can thus shed light on subsistence technologies and social organisa…
The oldest and longest enduring microlithic sequence in India
The Jwalapuram Locality 9 rockshelter in southern India dates back to 35 000 years ago and it is emerging as one of the key sites for documenting human activity and behaviour in South Asia. The excavated assemblage includes a proliferation of lithic artefacts, beads, worked bone and fragments of a human cranium. The industry is microlithic in character, establishing Jwalapuram 9 as one of the oldest and most important sites of its kind in South A…
Old World globalization and the Columbian exchange
A recent paper by Jones et al. (Food globalization in prehistory, World Archaeology, 2011, 43(4), 665–75) explores a prehistoric 'Trans-Eurasian' episode of food globalization characterized by the long-distance exchange of starch crops. Drawing upon a comparison to the Columbian Exchange, they emphasize the role of fast-growing crops in optimizing productivity, giving minimal consideration to other drivers. Here we re-evaluate the sequence and ti…
Documenting contamination in ancient starch laboratories
East Africa and Madagascar in the Indian Ocean world
Coastal Subsistence, Maritime Trade, and the Colonization of Small Offshore Islands in Eastern African Prehistory
Recent archaeological research has firmly established eastern Africa's offshore islands as important localities for understanding the region's pre-Swahili maritime adaptations and early Indian Ocean trade connections. While the importance of the sea and small offshore islands to the development of urbanized and mercantile Swahili societies has long been recognized, the formative stages of island colonization—and in particular the processes by whi…
Zanzibar and Indian Ocean trade in the first millennium CE
Recent archaeological excavations at the seventh- to tenth-century CE sites of Unguja Ukuu and Fukuchani on Zanzibar Island have produced large numbers of glass beads that shed new light on the island’s early interactions with the wider Indian Ocean world. A selected sample of the beads recovered was analyzed by laser ablation-inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) to determine the origins of the glass used to make the beads and…
Exploring agriculture, interaction and trade on the eastern African littoral
There is a growing interest in transoceanic connections between prehistoric communities occupying the Indian Ocean rim. Corroborative and well-sequenced archaeological data from eastern Africa have, however, been notably lacking. Recent excavations by the Sealinks Project in the coastal region of Kenya has sought to redress this imbalance by collecting base-line data on the local communities occupying this region between c. 1000 BC and AD 1000. A…
Indian Ocean Food Globalisation and Africa
Starch residues on undecorated Lapita pottery from Anir, New Ireland
Starch granules and raphides were identified on the surfaces of undecorated Lapita pottery sherds from the Kamgot site, New Ireland, c. 3300 BP. The microbotanical remains provide direct evidence for on-site plant-processing. Preliminary identification of the residues based on their morphology suggests they are from the aroid, Colocasia esculenta (taro), but further analysis is required to confirm this identification
Reinvestigation of Kuumbi Cave, Zanzibar, reveals Later Stone Age coastal habitation, early Holocene abandonment and Iron Age reoccupation
The late Pleistocene and Holocene history of eastern Africa is complex and major gaps remain in our understanding of human occupation during this period. Questions concerning the identities, geographical distributions and chronologies of foraging, herding and agricultural populations — often problematically equated with the chronological labels ‘Later Stone Age (LSA)’, ‘Neolithic’ and ‘Iron Age’ — are still unresolved. Previous studies at the sit…
Use of Zanzibar copal (Hymenaea verrucosa Gaertn.) as incense at Unguja Ukuu, Tanzania in the 7–8th century CE
Dietary Diversity on the Swahili Coast
Occupants of coastal and island eastern Africa-now known as the 'Swahili coast'-were involved in long-distance trade with the Indian Ocean world during the later first millennium CE. Such exchanges may be traced via the appearance of non-native animals in the archaeofaunal record; additionally, this record reveals daily culinary practises of the members of trading communities and can thus shed light on subsistence technologies and social organisa…
Iron Age agriculture, fishing and trade in the Mafia Archipelago, Tanzania
Small-scale excavations were recently undertaken at the site of Ukunju Cave in the Mafia Archipelago, Tanzania, to collect new bioarchaeological and material culture data relating to the site's occupation and the nature of early subsistence and long-distance trade in the region. Our findings suggest that occupation of the cave began during the Middle Iron Age (MIA, seventh to tenth centuries AD), as indicated by the presence of local Early Tana T…
Intersections, Networks and the Genesis of Social Complexity on the Nyali Coast of East Africa
Dhaba
Poison arrows and bone utensils in late Pleistocene eastern Africa
Most of our current knowledge of late Pleistocene African bone technology is drawn from southern African sites, with recent discoveries indicating that bone- and stone-tipped arrows (propelled by a bow) were in use prior to 60,000 years BP. Integration of archaeological with ethnographic data similarly suggests that hunting with poison-tipped arrows on the African continent has an antiquity of at least 24,000 years. Unfortunately, similar analysi…
Iron Age hunting and herding in coastal eastern Africa
The morphological differentiation of African bovids in highly fragmented zooarchaeological assemblages is a major hindrance to reconstructing the nature and spread of pastoralism in sub-Saharan Africa. Here we employ collagen peptide mass fingerprinting, known as Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry (ZooMS), coupled with recently published African ZooMS reference datasets, to identify domesticates and wild bovids in Iron Age assemblages at the cav…
Archaeobotany in Australia and New Guinea
Archaeobotany is the study of plant remains from archaeological contexts. Despite Australasian research being at the forefront of several methodological innovations over the last three decades, archaebotany is now a relatively peripheral concern to most archaeological projects in Australia and New Guinea. In this paper, many practicing archaeobotanists working in these regions argue for a more central role for archaeobotany in standard archaeolog…
Characterising marine mollusc exploitation in the eastern African Iron Age
Structural characterization and decontamination of dental calculus for ancient starch research
Revisiting Kalundu Mound, Zambia
Novel trajectories of food production, urbanism, and inter-regional trade fueled the emergence of numerous complex Iron Age polities in central and southern Africa. Renewed research and re-dating efforts in Botswana, Zimbabwe, and along the Swahili Coast are transforming models for how inter-regional interaction spheres contributed to these patterns. While societies in present-day Zambia played an important role in the trade of copper, ivory, gol…
Spice and rice
Microbotanical signatures of kreb
Throughout northern Africa, evidence for an intensification of wild grass gathering is reflected in Holocene archaeological contexts. However, both the recovery of macrobotanical assemblages and the specificity of their taxonomic classification are heavily influenced by food processing and post-depositional conditions. In contrast, inflorescence phytoliths provide high levels of taxonomic specificity and preserve well in most archaeological conte…
Coastal landscape changes at Unguja Ukuu, Zanzibar
Unguja Ukuu, located on the Zanzibar Archipelago, eastern Africa, was an active Indian Ocean trading settlement from the mid-first millennium until the early second millennium AD. As part of recent archaeological excavations aimed at understanding the site’s transregional trade networks, geoarchaeological analyses were undertaken to document the geomorphic context of the ancient settlement. Here, we outline the results of these field and laborato…
Long-term Trends in Terrestrial and Marine Invertebrate Exploitation on the Eastern African Coast
The nature and trajectory of coastal and maritime adaptations, and the complex ways foraging economies have been structured to include both marine and terrestrial resources, are becoming key topics of interest in African archaeological research. There is, therefore, an increasing need to understand the longer-term context for more recent shifts in coastal economies, and for greater attention to be paid to the role of a broader spectrum of resourc…
Starch residues on undecorated Lapita pottery from Anir, New Ireland
Starch granules and raphides were identified on the surfaces of undecorated Lapita pottery sherds from the Kamgot site, New Ireland, c. 3300 BP. The microbotanical remains provide direct evidence for on-site plant-processing. Preliminary identification of the residues based on their morphology suggests they are from the aroid, Colocasia esculenta (taro), but further analysis is required to confirm this identification
Blind tests in microscopic residue analysis
Morphometric analysis of calcium oxalate raphides and assessment of their taxonomic value for archaeological microfossil studies
Plant microfossil analysis is an important tool for understanding prehistoric plant exploitation in the Pacific region, where macrobotanical remains rarely survive. Calcium oxalate raphides (needle-shaped plant crystals) have been identified in several tool-residue and sediment microfossil studies and in some cases classified to genera or species, yet their diagnostic potential has not been thoroughly assessed through quantitative reference colle…
Re-viewing raphides
Needle-shaped calcium oxalate crystals called raphides are increasingly being identified in microfossil assemblages from archaeological sites, including in sediments and as residues on artefacts. This paper reviews issues associated with the identification and interpretation of raphides in the archaeological record of the Pacific. It is argued that, with a better understanding of the occurrence, distribution, and morphological variability of raph…
Archaeobotany in Australia and New Guinea
Archaeobotany is the study of plant remains from archaeological contexts. Despite Australasian research being at the forefront of several methodological innovations over the last three decades, archaebotany is now a relatively peripheral concern to most archaeological projects in Australia and New Guinea. In this paper, many practicing archaeobotanists working in these regions argue for a more central role for archaeobotany in standard archaeolog…
The oldest and longest enduring microlithic sequence in India
The Jwalapuram Locality 9 rockshelter in southern India dates back to 35 000 years ago and it is emerging as one of the key sites for documenting human activity and behaviour in South Asia. The excavated assemblage includes a proliferation of lithic artefacts, beads, worked bone and fragments of a human cranium. The industry is microlithic in character, establishing Jwalapuram 9 as one of the oldest and most important sites of its kind in South A…
Dhaba
The differential survival of native starch during cooking and implications for archaeological analyses
Exploring agriculture, interaction and trade on the eastern African littoral
There is a growing interest in transoceanic connections between prehistoric communities occupying the Indian Ocean rim. Corroborative and well-sequenced archaeological data from eastern Africa have, however, been notably lacking. Recent excavations by the Sealinks Project in the coastal region of Kenya has sought to redress this imbalance by collecting base-line data on the local communities occupying this region between c. 1000 BC and AD 1000. A…
Old World globalization and the Columbian exchange
A recent paper by Jones et al. (Food globalization in prehistory, World Archaeology, 2011, 43(4), 665–75) explores a prehistoric 'Trans-Eurasian' episode of food globalization characterized by the long-distance exchange of starch crops. Drawing upon a comparison to the Columbian Exchange, they emphasize the role of fast-growing crops in optimizing productivity, giving minimal consideration to other drivers. Here we re-evaluate the sequence and ti…
Intersections, Networks and the Genesis of Social Complexity on the Nyali Coast of East Africa
East Africa and Madagascar in the Indian Ocean world
Documenting contamination in ancient starch laboratories
Indian Ocean Food Globalisation and Africa
Use of Zanzibar copal (Hymenaea verrucosa Gaertn.) as incense at Unguja Ukuu, Tanzania in the 7–8th century CE
Iron Age agriculture, fishing and trade in the Mafia Archipelago, Tanzania
Small-scale excavations were recently undertaken at the site of Ukunju Cave in the Mafia Archipelago, Tanzania, to collect new bioarchaeological and material culture data relating to the site's occupation and the nature of early subsistence and long-distance trade in the region. Our findings suggest that occupation of the cave began during the Middle Iron Age (MIA, seventh to tenth centuries AD), as indicated by the presence of local Early Tana T…
Ecological consequences of human niche construction
The exhibition of increasingly intensive and complex niche construction behaviors through time is a key feature of human evolution, culminating in the advanced capacity for ecosystem engineering exhibited by Homo sapiens . A crucial outcome of such behaviors has been the dramatic reshaping of the global biosphere, a transformation whose early origins are increasingly apparent from cumulative archaeological and paleoecological datasets. Such data …
Coastal Subsistence, Maritime Trade, and the Colonization of Small Offshore Islands in Eastern African Prehistory
Recent archaeological research has firmly established eastern Africa's offshore islands as important localities for understanding the region's pre-Swahili maritime adaptations and early Indian Ocean trade connections. While the importance of the sea and small offshore islands to the development of urbanized and mercantile Swahili societies has long been recognized, the formative stages of island colonization—and in particular the processes by whi…
Reinvestigation of Kuumbi Cave, Zanzibar, reveals Later Stone Age coastal habitation, early Holocene abandonment and Iron Age reoccupation
The late Pleistocene and Holocene history of eastern Africa is complex and major gaps remain in our understanding of human occupation during this period. Questions concerning the identities, geographical distributions and chronologies of foraging, herding and agricultural populations — often problematically equated with the chronological labels ‘Later Stone Age (LSA)’, ‘Neolithic’ and ‘Iron Age’ — are still unresolved. Previous studies at the sit…
Poison arrows and bone utensils in late Pleistocene eastern Africa
Most of our current knowledge of late Pleistocene African bone technology is drawn from southern African sites, with recent discoveries indicating that bone- and stone-tipped arrows (propelled by a bow) were in use prior to 60,000 years BP. Integration of archaeological with ethnographic data similarly suggests that hunting with poison-tipped arrows on the African continent has an antiquity of at least 24,000 years. Unfortunately, similar analysi…
Early connections
Early connections - 1
Ships of the Desert, Camels of the Ocean
Characterising marine mollusc exploitation in the eastern African Iron Age
Zanzibar and Indian Ocean trade in the first millennium CE
Recent archaeological excavations at the seventh- to tenth-century CE sites of Unguja Ukuu and Fukuchani on Zanzibar Island have produced large numbers of glass beads that shed new light on the island’s early interactions with the wider Indian Ocean world. A selected sample of the beads recovered was analyzed by laser ablation-inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) to determine the origins of the glass used to make the beads and…
Dietary Diversity on the Swahili Coast
Occupants of coastal and island eastern Africa-now known as the 'Swahili coast'-were involved in long-distance trade with the Indian Ocean world during the later first millennium CE. Such exchanges may be traced via the appearance of non-native animals in the archaeofaunal record; additionally, this record reveals daily culinary practises of the members of trading communities and can thus shed light on subsistence technologies and social organisa…
Geography (38 works) · Archaeology (34 works) · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories (23 works) · Biology (21 works) · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies (18 works) · Geology (14 works) · Colonialism, slavery, and trade (13 works) · Agriculture (12 works) · Ecology (12 works) · Pacific and Southeast Asian Studies (12 works)